


Tears for the Sun

by JennInWonderland



Series: The Valkyrie and the Leprechaun [1]
Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: F/M, Mad Sweeney backstory, may add more later, original Valkyrie character, want to make it a resurrection story and a love story because Sweeney deserves it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-29 05:40:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19823683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JennInWonderland/pseuds/JennInWonderland
Summary: ‘He’d been majestic in his fury back then, with blue war paint smeared across his massive frame, blood on his teeth, and fire in his eyes and hair. He’d been the first and one of the only gods to hold Odin at bay once he’d set his sights on a new land.’Mad Sweeney’s story has deep deep roots but most people aren’t aware of just how deep. The Valkyrie, Rota, has been there since long before any of the other old gods crossed paths with the would be leprechaun (Grimnir excluded) and after Sweeney’s fatal confrontation with Grimnir and Shadow it’s her job to collect his soul. She doesn’t expect all the emotions this brings up for her.





	Tears for the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> I hadnt written ANYTHING in over a decade but this plot just wouldn’t leave my mind so I had to get it out and once I got it out I had to share it, then more ideas started coming to me faster then I knew what to do with. I love Mad Sweeney, he is probably the best character in a series to me ever. He has so many intriguing layers to the character and her just inspired me, along with a few writers up here. 
> 
> This is part one of my series that I literally never thought I would write. I hope you enjoy it.

“You were god of the sun, of luck, of craft, of art, of everything valuable to civilization. The Shining One, they called you. You saved your people from their old enemy. Lamfada, they called you. Long-hand. For your skill with your spear. You had fight when they needed to fight. Because of you, they survived.”

~Mr. Ibis to Mad Sweeney(American Gods 2-07)~

~*~

As she walked up to the copper haired man on the cold metal table she couldn’t help but to remember the first time she laid eyes on him some 3,000 years ago as she and her All-Father came to the shores of the emerald hued island he’d always called home and had always defended viciously.

He’d been majestic in his fury back then, with blue war paint smeared across his massive frame, blood in his teeth, and fire in his eyes and hair. He’d been the first and one of the only gods to hold Odin at bay once he’d set his sights on a new land. 

Odin had sent wave after wave of his believers onto the sun god’s shores to fight his battle for him and wave after wave of his soldiers came scrambling back screaming about some ‘Hound’s Son’, some golden warrior without fear of any blade, that would rip out their fellow soldier’s throats with his bare teeth or could pin men to trees with a spear thrown from impossible distances. Many of Odin’s soldiers just didn’t come back at all.

Eventually the two of them came to a gentleman’s agreement- live and let live. Odin had never lost so many believer’s in one battle and the magic that the sun god Lugh and his family the Tu’atha De’ Danann used to shroud the island was too strong for him to come ashore himself, and even if he did he feared they’d set a trap and imprison him as he’d known them to do to invading foreign gods in the past.

Lugh didn’t trust the brutal foreign god that sent countless believers to be slaughtered and he didn’t want to compromise with him. The king didn’t fear battle, in truth he relished it- but he also loved his people and detested that his subjects and believers were under the same sword as his immortal family and himself. They could sustain the fight forever, the mortals could not...so in the name of peace for his followers and his family he agreed to a compact.

Their agreement lasted a good long while until Mother Church came along and did what Odin could not- she knocked the Shining One, the great god king Lugh off his rightful thrown. Grimnir was there to help him pick up the pieces for a price, of course...a favor. Unfortunately no one told the poor mad king that Grimnir was a ruthless snake and once you owe him a favor the debt will follow you all the way to the grave.

She looked down at his body and instead of feeling exhilarated and excited to finally be collecting this fallen warrior’s soul as she she should, she felt only sadness, regret, and grief. As she moved to gather up his body all she could think about was their pasts and the gloomy future ahead of her. 

~*~

She was a Valkyrie, a gatherer of souls fallen in battle. She’d had her icy blue eyes on Suibhne mac Colmain for centuries- millennia- since long before he went by that name or by the one he was going by in this depressing age of computer screens, smartphones, and non-believers. For ages she’d anxiously awaited collecting him and delivering him to Valhalla or maybe even back to the rolling Irish hills he’d wandered for centuries, back to where his memories made sense to him—

She’d watched him go from god king to mad king to leprechaun to a man who’d lost his grip on sanity and sobriety completely. She’d expected to feel grief but also she had expected to feel relief and a bittersweet joy at finally being able to give Mad Sweeney some peace. She wasn’t feeling any of the relief she’d expected, or any of the joy.

The Valkyrie did feel the grief though, but the weight of it felt more like a physical thing than any emotion. It was far heavier than the wings that she’d used to fly over battles in the days of old. She had not been expecting that. 

“Hello Rota, it has been a very long time since I last saw you”, says a mahogany complected man with thin gold rimmed glasses and an almost nonexistent half smile on his thin face, startling her from her thoughts.

“Ibis— I wish I could say it’s a pleasure to see you but I’m truly unhappy about the circumstance”, the shield maiden replies, “I’m sad to see him go. I honestly didn’t think he’d ever find his battle...and even then, I think I may have hoped he’d win.”

The god of death and the collector of the fallen stand side by side for long quiet moments and then the slender man chuckles and shakes his head. 

“In the end I think he remembered most all of it...his story...stories. He looked better than i’ve seen him in ages, when he came for Wednesday. He called him a One-Eyed Cunt with his final breath, if the stories are to be believed”, he says, looking in the direction of the parlour where they could hear the hushed voices of the other old gods.

“I’m sure he did”, Rota replies, her throat feeling surprisingly tight as she imagined the former king turned leprechaun’s final moments, “I’ve learned to believe most of the stories about him...and he always did have a way with words.” They both laugh, thinking about their old friend, and that’s what he’d been...especially now— with him laid out on a table. In a world full of liars and traitors, a world they all very much belonged to, his word had always been one you could count on— even if he was half-mad or all the way drunk. 

“You think he’ll be back”, Ibis asks as he walks over to a small roll-away tray table and pours two glasses of Southern Comfort, offering one glass to the Valkyrie. She took it and they both raised their glasses to the man that used to be a king and then took the glass’ full contents down in one long swig— just as the man would have wanted.

“I don’t know,” she says, her eyes never leaving the man she came to collect, a ghost of a smile lighting up her face, “It seems like a lot of people claim to believe in fairies these days— maybe that will be enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously I don’t own the characters from American Gods but Rota is mine, even though I didn’t elaborate much about her in this story. In my minds eye she looks similar to Lagertha from Vikings and has a similar personality but she is definately a separate character from her.


End file.
